SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AL-ATTAS AND AL-FARUQI IN ISLAMISATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN EDUCATION Nik Zuraihan Nik Mat Kamil International Islamic University College Selangor Nur Hazwani Hanafi International Islamic University Malaysia ABSTRACT In Islam, knowledge is the most valuable possession that a muslim can own. Knowledge comes from Allah and He is the source of knowledge. Therefore, it is important to islamise knowledge, because the contemporary knowledge has undergone the process of secularisation and westernisation that endanger the Muslim s faith. As a result of this, two Muslim proponents profoundly proposed the concepts of Islamisation of knowledge. Hence, this paper has thoroughly analysed the similarities and differences of Al-Attas and Al-Faruqi works related to Islamisation and education. It is in response to many attempts by institutions to islamise knowledge in education field. Yet, Islamic universities in general face many challenges in their attempt to develop a sound curriculum in education. Therefore, the present analysis based on Al-Attas and Al- Faruqi s works may help educators to further develop and integrate curriculum in order to produce well balanced individuals, who potentially fit to become a future leader. INTRODUCTION In Islam, knowledge is the most valuable possession that a muslim can own. Knowledge comes from Allah and He is the source of knowledge. Rosnani & Rossidy (2000) mentioned that the traditional Muslim scholars contend that all knowledge is from Allah and therefore it is already Islamised. Hence, there is no need to re-islamise it (p.20). Allah has granted two types of knowledge to man which are revealed and acquired. These two knowledge are given to the human to help them develop their potentials to become a better human beings. Since all knowledge are from Allah, hence, all knowledge is sacred and inconceivable without values. Nevertheless, even though knowledge is sacred, its application can sometimes be mixed with human error, prejudice, passion and self-interest. According to Fazlur Rahman, all knowledge is good, but, sadly human abused the knowledge given by Allah. As for us, the nature of our Islamic knowledge is different from the Western knowledge. The main thing that distinguishes the Islamic way of thinking from the Western is the conviction in the supremacy of Allah over everything and the origin of everything inclusive of knowledge from Allah. On the other hand, with regard to the Western knowledge, secularist and modernist believe that, there is no need to islamise knowledge (Rosnani & Rossidy, 2000). This is because, they believe that the modem scientific knowledge is universal and culturally neutral, hence, it cannot be infused with the value system of any particular culture.
Our sources of knowledge which are from the Quran and sunnah are sacred. Allah emphasised the importance of knowledge in his first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad Pbuh is Surah Al-Alaq (ayah:1-5). The first verse stated that, Iqra, which means Read in the name of Allah. As Muslims, we should remember that the reason for us to seek knowledge is to get closer to Allah by being able to tadabbur, tafakkur and ya qilun on Allah s creations on this earth. Our sources of knowledge are the revealed knowledge or (wahy) which is certain, undoubtable and eternal (for instance, the knowledge from the Quran). Another type of knowledge is the acquired knowledge that is always changing and open for human s errors. For example, the knowledge of Sciences which is acquired through experiences, observation and research can be different from one to another researcher. This knowledge is discursive and obtained through inductive, deductive or both. The emergence of the idea of Islamisation of contemporary knowledge stems from the concept of contemporary knowledge that is neither value-free nor universal. According to Islam, knowledge is value-laden. On the contrary, the Western believes that by separating values from knowledge, they are creating better knowledge. Rosnani & Rossidy (2000) stated in her study that Kirmani argues that in reality "there is nothing neutral or value free about modern Science, its priorities, emphasis, method and process and its worldview are dictated by the narrow concerns of Western society or culture (p. 20). Furthermore, by divorcing values and religion from the body of knowledge, Western civilisation is holding their knowledge that are not shareable with other civilisation and only for their own well-being. It is important to islamise knowledge because the contemporary knowledge has undergone the process of secularisation and westernisation that endanger the Muslims faith. As a result of this, two Muslims proponents thoroughly proposed the concepts of Islamisation of knowledge. Hence, this paper has thoroughly analysed the similarities and differences of Al-Attas and Al- Faruqi works related to Islamisation and education. THE CONCEPT OF ISLAMISATION OF KNOWLEDGE (IOK) Al- Attas argues that knowledge is not neutral and can indeed be infused with a nature and content which masquerades as knowledge. Al-Attas believes in Islamic metaphysics in which it is a synthesis of ideas traditionally upheld by Muslim theologians, philosophers, sufis or ahl al- tasawwuf. In his concept, he emphasises the reality and concept of God as the major thrust of the Islamic worldview. Knowledge about God is not merely cognitive but experiential, based on one s intuitive experience and awareness of one s self and the world of creations. Each metaphysical system and worldview projects are different for every civilisation.western vision of reality and truth is not based on revealed Truth, but, based on philosophical speculations that are uncertain and relative. As for Islam, it derives its sources from revelation, confirmed by religion and affirmed by intellectual and intuitive principles. Al-Attas is against dualism. He believes that knowledge is not totally and purely from the product of human mind and experience but also based on revealed truth. The metaphysics of Islam is not based on reason and experience alone but firmly grounded by revelation. According to Al-Attas, he defines knowledge with reference to God as the arrival in the soul of the meaning of a thing or an object of knowledge while with reference to the soul as interpreter is the arrival of the soul at the meaning of a thing or an object of knowledge. In other words, knowledge is the arrival of meaning into the soul.
DEFINITION OF ISLAMISATION OF CONTEMPORARY KNOWLEDGE Islamisation is the liberation of man first from magical, mythological, animistic, nationalcultural tradition, and then secular control over his reason and his language. Al-Attas believes that in order to Islamise the knowledge, we have to Islamise the language and thought first. This is because, the language, thought and reason are closely related and interdependent in projecting to man his worldview or vision of reality. Secondly, he proposed that the foreign elements and key concepts should be isolated, removed from the text then infused with Islamic elements. Once these two steps have been addressed, the Islamisation of language will eventually Islamise thought and reason. On the other hand, Al-Faruqi believes in recasting knowledge as Islam relates to it. In order to islamise knowledge is to redefine and reorder the data, to rethink the reasoning and relating of the data, to reevaluate the conclusions, to reproject the goals to serve the cause of Islam. He believes that to islamise knowledge is to Islamise disciplines and produce university-level textbooks. Al-Faruqi defines Islamisation of modern knowledge as integrating the new knowledge into the corpus of the Islamic legacy by eliminating, amending, re-interpreting and adapting its components as the worldview of Islam and its values dictate. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES Al-Attas aims to protect Muslims from corrupted knowledge that misguides and leads to confusion and scepticism of Muslim minds. By having knowledge that is in conformity with its true purpose, the Islamic worldview will bring salvation to man in this world and hereafter. Al-Faruqi s aim is similar to Al-Attas which is based on Tawhid and Allah is the ultimate cause of every event. The unity of God means He is the cause of everything. God is alive, active and continuously creating and destroying. Nature is neither bad nor evil, rather it is viewed as a creation or a gift. The main purpose of creation is to facilitate and assist man to act in good deeds and attain happiness. In west, natural Science could only prosper after secularisation but in Islam, Muslim scientists do no need to remove god from nature. Tawhid is central and comprises 5 principles: 1- Duality- God and non-god, Creator-creature, 2- Ideationality- the relation between two orders reality is ideational in nature 3- Teleology- the cosmos is created for a purposeserving the purpose of its creator 4- The capacity of man and malleability of nature 5- responsibility and judgement. Al-Faruqi develops his objectives based on five fundamentals which are; 1-to master the modern disciplines 2-to master the Islamic legacy 3-to establish the specific relevance of Islam in each area of modern knowledge 4-to seek ways for creative synthesis between legacy and modern knowledge 5-to launch Islamic thought on the trajectory which leads it to fulfilment of the divine pattern of Allah. Nevertheless, Al-Faruqi has been criticised for his attempt to integrate the Islamic knowledge into the secular knowledge and he was said to be putting the horse before the cart as a result where other scholars insisting on bringing the Islamic knowledge to the secular knowledge by removing the secular elements.
METHODOLOGY Al- Attas Al-Attas believes that in order to Islamise the knowledge, the most important step is to Islamise the language, thought and reason because they are closely related and interdependent in projecting to man his worldview or vision of reality. By islamising the language will islamise thought and reason. Secondly, the foreign elements and key concepts should be isolated, removed from the western elements then infused with Islamic elements. Tawhidic method in which there is a unity of all the empirical, rational, deductive and inductive methods. Knowledge includes faith and belief (iman) and knowledge should be followed by action (amal) for there is no useful knowledge without action and there is no worthwhile action without knowledge. Al-Faruqi Al-Faruqi states the necessity of remoulding every discipline so as to incorporate the relevance of Islam, along a triple axis which constitutes tawhid. These three axes for Islamisation of modern disciplines are: 1. The unity of knowledge, which will abolish the dichotomy between 'aqli [acquired] and naqli[revealed] sciences; 2. The unity of life, which will eradicate the distinction that some sciences are valueinvolved and some are value-free, thus making all the sciences as value loaded; and 3. The unity of history, which will remove the separation of knowledge into individual and social sciences, forming all disciplines that are at the same time humanistic and ummatic. He laids a fundamental principle of the Islamic worldview that serves as the framework of Islamic thought, methodology and way of life. He emphasises on the Principle of Islamic methodology and proposed the workplace. The 12 steps of the workplan 1-Mastery of the modern disciplines; 2-Discipline survey; 3-Mastery of the Islamic legacy:anthology; 4-Mastery of the Islamic legacy: The analysis; 5-Establishment of the specific relevance of Islam to the disciplines; 6-Critical assessment of the modern discipline:the state of the art; 7-critical assessment of the Islamic legacy:the state of the art; 8- Survey of the Ummah s major problems; 9- Survey of the problems of humankind 10-Creative analyses and syntheses; 11-Recasting the disciplines under the framework of Islam: The university textbooks; 12-Dissemination of Islamised knowledge. In reference to the above workplan, the first two steps are to ensure Muslims understanding and mastery of the disciplines as they developed in the West. The next two steps are to ensure modern scholars who are not familiar with the Islamic legacy due to the problem of access will be provided an opportunity to access it from anthologies prepared by the traditionally trained Muslims scholars.
THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES OF AL-ATTAS AND AL-FARUQI Al-Attas is more concern with reforming the mind through the construction of the Islamic worldview which is believed to be manifested in the right actions while Al-Faruqi is more concerned with the process that requires epistemology so that the knowledge is reconstructed such that the Islamic values are based on the five unities that form the first principles of Islamic methodology that are evident in the text. The five unities are as follows (Al-Faruqi, 1982): a) the unity of Allah; b) the unity of creation; c) the unity of Truth and the unity of knowledge d) the unity of Life; and e) the unity of humanity. In addition, Al-Faruqi emphasises that the process of Islamisation will be concluded once a textbook for each course in the disciplines that integrates Islamic values and concepts into the subject matter is accomplished. Nonetheless, they believe that knowledge is not valueneutral and its attainment is possible and they believe that God is the origin of all knowledge. They both believe that the root problem lies in the educational system-the problem of existing knowledge and the solution is to Islamize the existing knowledge. The bad elements of modern knowledge need to be eliminated, ended, reinterpret or adapted to be in accordance with the dictate Islamic worldview (al-faruqi) while Al-Attas believes that the Western values need to be isolated or removed and then infused with Islamic elements and key concepts. ATTEMPTS TO ISLAMISE KNOWLEDGE IN EDUCATION FIELD Since knowledge is divided into two types, which are revealed knowledge and acquired knowledge, there is a need to integrate these two. Revealed and acquired knowledge cannot be separated to ensure that humans are excellent with soul. This is because excellence without soul is mechanistic in nature. There are numbers of institutions which attempt to integrate the Naqil and Aqli knowledge such as International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), International Islamic School (IIS), USIM and others. One of the most prominent example is IIUM. IIUM curriculum structure is based on the combination of these two types of knowledge whereby the students need to take subjects from the Kulliyah of Islamic Revealed knowledge and subjects of their specialisation from another Kulliyah. For example, one can have a major in Economics while minoring Shariah. This is an example of a model that attempts to integrate curriculum. The reason for this attempt is resulted from the inability of the graduates to live according to the Islamic way. Due to the influence of Western education, the product of learners are not at par with the holistic nature or well-balanced individuals propagates by the National Education blueprint to develop a well balanced individuals who are fit emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually and potentially fit to become a future leader. However, due to the dichotomy of education, the learners are becoming half-baked Muslims. Currently, Islamic universities in general face many challenges in its attempt to develop a sound curriculum in education. According to Rosnani (2013) some of the challenges that they face are; 1) The lack of knowledge of Islamic curriculum foundations especially philosophical, historical and social, due to the lack of knowledge in the Quran, the
Prophet s sunnah, muslim scholars and their legacy, and Islamic history. 2) Designing the program curriculum structure for university system that is, the kind of courses (knowledge) to be offered for a uniting core and the specialisation that is integrated and concur with an Islamic philosophy of education, taking into consideration Islamic epistemology, and the needs of the society, the nation and its industry. 3) Inability to determine what knowledge is most worth for our worldview-the hierarchy of knowledge for our contemporary time. This is reflected in the university curriculum structure of most Muslim countries. 4) Lack of competent teachers with a highly integrated professional and Islamic Traditional knowledge. 5) Lack of knowledge of teaching methodologies and various methods of assessment for different purposes. 6) The scarcity of appropriate textbooks and reference materials. CONCLUSION Islamic revivalists convincingly argued that the contemporary secular knowledge and modern Western educational system has to be islamised, to pave way for the establishment of a comprehensive Islamisation of all dimensions of private and public life. This is because, the present day curriculum does not manifest the spirit of integration. It transmits knowledge and skills with utilitarian purposes which is subjected to paper qualification and earn a living but not being a vicegerent (khalifah) of the creator as it is in Islam. Hence, the need for Islamisation of contemporary knowledge is a very important mission for the Muslim Ummah. According to Al- Attas, Islamization of knowledge requires: the separation of foreign elements and errors from the body of knowledge. It demands that what is left be remoulded in accordance with Islam. He further asserts that accepting the present day knowledge as it is and then hope to islamise it merely by granting or transplanting it into Islamic sciences and principles, if this is done it will produce conflicting results neither beneficial nor desirable. Therefore, Islamisation of knowledge aims at reinvigorating Islamic thoughts and its methodology by giving it access to the main fountain heads of the legacy of the ummah. Likewise its purpose is to achieve mastery of Islamic thoughts in various branches of human knowledge (social physical or practically applied) in order to build a sound contemporary Islamic base for dynamic action in all spheres of life and civilisation. This means that we should give due attention to the provision of various spiritual and material resources for reformation in the intellectual sphere. It is important to remember that, without reformation of thought and methodology and in the absence of genuine and clear vision, all effort are bound to be ineffective and all sacrifices are useless. This is how the civilisation of Islam and those before it grew and progressed. More so, Islamic creativity, Islamic contribution, and the full realisation of Islamisation in the being of the ummah and its civilisational direction will follow the command and mastery of the fundamentals of Islam and Islamic legacy along with the acquaintance of modern sciences. It is the duty of the Muslim intellect and of the genuine Muslim thinker to quicken this pace on the road of enquiry and self- preparation; and to excel in the sciences, knowledge, civilisation and transformation, thereby opening far wider horizons than ever before reached by humanity and modern science (General Principle and Work Plan 1989).
RECOMMENDATION In another dimension, Sidek Baba (2016) contends that there are four factors that give rise to Islamic civilisation as follows; the synergy between ulama and umara; knowledge was integrated in nature; tradition of scholarship prospered and benefitting comparative advantages. In summary of all the above assertions, it is rightly observed that for a successful Islamisation process to be established in the society, the pre-requisites are as follows: (a) There should be sincerity in niyya (intention) in the principles and ideology, vision and mission. (b) The Islamisation process should adopt and adhere strictly to Qur an and Sunnah as well as Ijma (concensus of ulama) on issues related to action plan,curriculum and the calibre of personnel to be utilised in this direction. (c) The synergy between ulama and umara should emphasise on collaboration, motivation, indoctrinating and steadily evaluation of the islamisation process with a view to make amendments,adjustment and advancement in accordance with shari ah. (d) The tradition of scholarship should be prosperous and well funded to cater for the demanding needs of the Muslims for science and technological advancements. This can be forestalled by reawakening and sensitising Muslim youths to engage in enquiry and ponder upon it, conduct investigation, make discovery, invention, and Publish research articles in reputable journals and book in prints and on net. (e) The benefits of comparative advantages should be judiciously encouraged and utilised. Therefore, Muslim youth should be motivated to study Qissah or history of cross-cultural societies together with their creativity, social activities and the advancement reckoned with. The platform should be established for the ulama and umara to showcase and sensitise on such exploratory research. This can be done through organising local and International conferences, workshops, seminars, symposium and debates (muqabala); and can be featured by the media industry to benefit the entire society and make a step further to Islamic Advancement. REFERENCES Al-Attas, S. M. N. (1978). Islam and Secularism. Kuala Lumpur: Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia. Al-Faruqi, Ismail R. (1982). Islamisation of Knowledge. Washington: IIT Hashim, R. (2014). Higher Education Curriculum Development for Islamization of Knowledge. Islamic Economics Education in Southeast Asian Universities. Rosnani Hashim & Ssekamanya Siraje Abdallah. (2013). Islamization of Human Knowledge in Theory and Practice: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects in the IIUM context. Institute of Education, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), 1, 1-11. Hashim, R., & Rossidy, I. (2000). Islamization of Knowledge: A Comparative Analysis of the Conceptions of Al-Attas and Al-Faruqi, (I), 19-44.